This is probably the best contribution anyone made to the conversation. The role of faith in a person's life cannot be diminished, especially where the scientific option is contested. I belong to a Christian denomination that doesn't believe in The Trinity. I never answered questions about it that implied that it was the belief I held. I didn't mind writing essays on it though when the question started with "According to the trinity doctrine, ..."
There’s no contention on evolution. That’s like saying the equivalent...
“According to the theory of gravity, apples fall to earth...”
Couching all these questions as if they are not facts does nothing but ease people’s minds who don’t want to deal with reality, and does a disservice to students.
As I become more learned with age, I find no greater delight than being humbled by how little we can actually claim to know. In my opinion this humility should be used for our advantage: by the small burden of contextualizing the origins and boundaries of a [scientific] belief, I think we prime ourselves for accelerating cross domain scientific revolutions. Referencing the origins of belief systems is a practice we can employ to benefit future understanding.
I'd argue the same is true for someone who studies multiple religions and their various interpretations. How would they arrive at any greater understanding without having references to the origins of groups of belief?
easiest from a strategic perspective of increasing the rate of scientific revolution. There is of course a short term burden of contextualizing beliefs.
Just like we don't have elementary kids read Kant despite the eventual value (when they're prepared for the intellectual rigor), evolution questions should not be given to 14-17 year old kids as qualified "according to the theory of evolution." Maybe 18 -- it's a tough question that depends on individual kids' capabilities.
If interested why, there’s lots of reference material:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1416594795/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_.F...
Anyhow, without evolution we would still have all of those things, we wound have just lost our ability to tell a convincing story for why they are the way they are.
It seems unlikely, but if an alternative explanation were too arise and be deemed more useful by biologists, then the study of that theory would also be biology.
In fact, it would still be biology if it were deemed less useful, it just might not make it into the textbooks in that case.
Observing the exposure of these widespread thought processes by means of social media has truly and deeply disturbed me. There is a good, solid chunk of people who are absolutely not interested in learning or having their minds changed.
I am German and went to a US college where I observed students jumping out from their seat, yelling at a lecturer that they need to include God and his creation stuff in biology lectures.
I was truly baffled. In Germany, we have some of the most persistent anti-scientific and conspiracy communities as well. Especially anti-vaxers, chem trails, and anti-electromagnetic radiation folks.
As a student, my landlord had a radiation shield built on top of electric wiring in the basement. It was a painted brick from some website making bank off of idiots.
And don't forget homeopathy and how politics even financially supports it.
Ah yes. The multi-million Euro industry that sells the placebo effect in bottles.
For example, a student may give a correct answer to this question, but when employed as doctor and prescribing a treatment (e.g. for contraception, pregnancy issues, heritable diseases) they may act according to their beliefs rather than the theory they were asked about, with dangerous consequences.
The law is to protect students against anti-religious teachers who punish students for making religious statements.
I guess we need a law to protect students from having to read controversial books too?
Evolution is not contested in the slightest. Should we grade tests to allow students to believe that things fall up?
If you think that’s hyperbole then that’s the problem right there. The whole evolution debate is so tiring.
You don’t just enjoy your life when you do that, but actively work at destroying others.
“I had expressed a certain gladness at living in a century in which we finally got the basis of the universe straight.”
Yeah that’s definitely not right, the correct solution of course being “Burn the mathematician^W witch!”
idk, it seems more aligned with protecting the weird thing some USA¹ Christians do where they take the Bible as historical fact re: creation of the world...
quoting the article:
> students can't be penalized if their work is scientifically wrong as long as the reasoning is because of their religious beliefs.
is science class really the place to do that? are we cool with Ohio children being unfamiliar with evolutionary theory because of their religion?
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1. i'm not sure if singling out the USA is correct here, but it's the only country where i've seen this. even here in Poland, where a lot of people are seriously religious (Christian), this sort of thing doesn't seem to happen